Monday, February 11, 2019

the last book I ever read (Crudo: A Novel by Olivia Laing, excerpt eight)

Within 24 hours it was all sorted, flights, hotels, sublets, the works. It was always like this, abominable, impossible and then done, barely worth a thought. Kathy emailed her friends, Matt + Carl + Larry + Alex. Mi living room es su living room, Larry said. He lived on C and 9th, she loved his couch. She and Carol expressed their ongoing sorrow and concern with regard to Sinéad O’Connor, who was going through a rough time publicly documented in YouTube videos neither of them could bear to watch. Poor beautiful Sinéad, Instead Kathy put on ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ and gazed in awe at that choirboy’s face. She was hung over, she’d drunk a great deal yet again, but that phase of the summer was now behind them, they’d agreed to it over breakfast, 25 August 2017, painfully confronting the wreckage of the previous night, the chicken carcass in a pool of congealing fat, the damp remains of salad, the thirteen glasses with dregs of brandy and red wine. Thirteen her husband said. There shouldn’t be thirteen, and triumphantly he plucked an unused rummer from the mix. Now, they were teetotal, from this day forth they would spurn alcohols of all kinds, especially wine, even champagne. For at least a week they would be sober, their livers would shrink, they’d stop being so bilious and grumpy and fat. Kathy had put on three pounds this summer, pure booze + lack of yoga, she wrote a frantic email to her instructor begging to return. New people, married, toned, sheeny, eternal.